Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
So let's change it to something less complicated. It's ambulance drivers and they know their patient will die if she doesn't get to the hospital quickly. Their only way to accomplish this will probably hurt some protesters. Should they do it? Does it matter if there was an alternate way to protest? Does it matter if there is good reason to believe that without this protest more than one innocent person will probably die? Does it matter if the protest was for a good cause but was technically illegal?
No numbers this time. Since there is an 85% chance you who are reading this will misconstrue them.
Ambulance driver is a better hypothetical than driving your own mother. People aren't going to offer the Spock-like answer that you are looking for if the driver is acting to materially increase the odds of survival for himself or a close family member. (As an aside, if Spock-like answers were what you were looking for, I'm surprised you didn't include information about the age and general health of the mother as compared to the protesters. This is the point that Luckbox was making.)
I also don't think statistical illiteracy is the problem. A fourth grader would understand the basic math in your original hypothetical. It is a thought experiment, however, because in the real world, you will never be able to calibrate the percentages (or the extent of the injuries you cause) as finely as your original proposal implied. In most real world examples, you will be doing little more than guessing as to the ultimate consequences of your actions.
I think that it is relatively obvious that things like availability of alternative forms of protest, justness of the cause, etc., should affect the answer to the question. That's easy to see if you take an extreme case. For example, suppose that 30,000 Proud Boys surround NYU Hospital for the purpose of preventing entry or egress into the hospital. They state that they will not leave until the 19th Amendment (which provided for women's suffrage) is repealed. In that case, the cause is ridiculous, the harm is significant, and there is no particular connection between the form of the protest and the cause. I'm sure that most people would agree that force should be used if necessary to access the hospital in that absurd hypothetical.